Some things can be measured. Some things are fantasy and illusions. It has been a frustrating day for me today. I had 3 inquiries from one huge state, and all of the cold pool owners were told negative things about pool heat pumps. So today I had to remember my 6th grade math to make it easier to see how to compare different ways of heating. This one state that has made me is responsible for turning me into a Thursday math genius & educator. Only in this state do I hear pool professionals tell pool owners that pool heatpumps, “don’t work here.” These are the same people who go home at night to their houses that are heated and cooled with heat pumps and never think twice about them. I mean really your refrigerator in your house is a type of heat pump. One pool guy told my customer in San Diego that it was too humid there for a heat pump to work. Humidity of course is a form of heat and great for heat pumps that are heating. Also today one swimming pool contractor in Sacramento said it was too dry there for a swimming pool heat pump to work. I have these same heat pumps making people happy in 3 different deserts from California to Northern Africa, Norway to Alaska, and Canada to Argentina. A few deserted Islands in Fiji and Hawaii too. Just ask Gilligan or the skipper. (We have some in Bolivia and Turkmenistan doing their job where it will be hard to find a service guy) and There are a bunch of Canadian swimming pool heat pump manufacturers that make their heat pumps for Canada who think California with it’s mild climate is perfect for heaters and sometimes pool chillers. Here is some math for the class: Propane has 91,502 Btu’s. 15% goes up the exhaust so what you put in the water is about = 77,777 Btu’s depending on the efficiency of the pool gas heater. If LP is $3.00 a gallon, then you pay $3.00 for that 77,000 Btu’s of heat. If a 143,000 Btu heat pump uses 7 KW at .12 cents a Kilowatt, then you pay about .45 cents for the same Btu’s. There is no loss or wasted heat. You can play with the numbers if propane is less or the KW is more where you live. There was a time when I have a camera on a heat pump in Las Vegas Nevada for a couple of years on the web 24 hours a day every day of the year keeping the pool warm. I have to thank my buddy for that. Some gas heater manufacturers made those videos required watching for their gas heater engineers in California so that they could also educate pool owners about pool heat pumps when they called in asking for information. I had a nice elderly lady customer in Stockton or Sacramento who bought one of my heat pumps 20 years ago. She didn’t want a propane tank on her property and it was too expensive to run a natural gas line on the property as it was going to cost her $1,500.00 because the it was a long pipe run to the pool. She begged her pool maintenance company to sell her a pool heat pump. She did all her research and saw the warranties were better for pool heat pumps than gas, and also that swimming pool heat pumps were made with titanium with lifetime heat exchanger warranties and that is what she wanted. They refused to help her and she bought one from me. She didn’t want to do it herself but she called an electrician as that is 95% of the job and then she asked her nephew that was a plumber who was visiting her to glue the two pipes. Took him 15 minutes I think she said. She then heated her pool and was very happy. She kept her pool guy to clean and service the pool and started noticing after a few months that he was bringing strangers to her back yard. She asked what was going on and she found out that her pool guy was using her house as a sales and marketing tool to sell swimming pool heat pumps to other pool owners. She was so mad as he had refused to help her, so she fired him and kicked his butt off her property. Oh and I forgot to mention that 2 of the inquiries that I got today had full house PV panels so were generating lots of free electricity. 2 of these guys would pay almost nothing for pool heat and cooling and still they were told that they should have gas burning by their pool sending almost 20,000 pounds of pollution in the air a year. As Gomer Pyle always said: for shame, for shame, for shame. If he ever would have gotten a pool heat pump he would have said: “Golly Shazam”.
I love free heat. Stay safe out there. All these forest fires are stressing me out.
Best,
Marcus Cell 360 348 7574 (text)
I have been sending swimming pool heat pumps to California for 20 years. California has a huge amount of pools. Traditionally they have been heated with gas. My job 20 years ago was to educate pool guys and pool owners of the advantages of heat pumps. It was hard at first. California had a history of cheap natural gas and most of the pool professionals had been putting gas in for 20 to 50 years. Things are changing though. So far in the last 20 years, I have never had a customer sorry that they put in one of my heat pumps. I never got that call or e-mail. Now it seems a no brainer that heat pumps with titanium heat exchangers, stainless steel fittings and polymer UV protected cabinets would be more durable than copper and steel gas heaters. (Note some gas manufacturers have now stepped up and made their heaters more weather and pool ph tough) Ask us who if you are going in that direction. Heat pumps also are less expensive to use. You are not burning or consuming gas like a gas heater or pure electricity like an element pool heater. (Similar to an electric stove element) or even an oil fired pool heater. A heat pump uses a little electricity to move solar heat that is in the air to the water. Even at 45F, there is enough heat in the air to heat most pools with a heat pump that has a defrosting model heat pump. We are just moving heat around instead of creating heat by burning a fuel. Plus a heat pump can cool the pool too. Tough to that with gas. One of the largest pool heating companies in the world required their gas engineers to watch my 30 heat pump videos that I had made in desert conditions to get up to speed when talking to customers calling in. The gas guys would say on the phone, “heat pumps don’t work here” while ignoring the fact that they work all across Canada, Norway, the midwest, New England, Texas, Arizona etc. Don’t say they don’t work in Canada to a Canadian heat pump manufacturer as they would just laugh. Lots of pool heater manufacturers in Canada. In about 2002 I took a call from a lady from Sacramento. She said that for one year she begged her pool service company to put in a heat pump for her. She had done her research and was convinced that it would be in her best interest to have a heat pump for her pool. She also didn’t want gas exhaust fumes near her pool that she used to health reasons. She also considered herself green and wanted to use the most efficient technology available to solve her cold pool needs. The pool guy refused to help her and she came to me to supply her with a heat pump. She hired her own licensed electrician, as that is 90% of most pool heat pump installation jobs require, and I believe she glued the two pipes herself. She called me the next year and told me how she loved her heat pump but that a strange thing happened after she started using it. She kept her pool service company who wouldn’t help her with the heat pump and they were still maintaining her chemicals and repairing her filter and water pump, etc. They were supposed to come every two weeks but she noticed that they were coming sometimes twice a week and they were bringing people she didn’t recognize on the property and spending a lot of time looking at her heat pump. She went out to see what was going on and discovered that the pool contractor who refused to help her get a heat pump was using her as an example of a successful heat pump installation to sell heat pumps to her neighbors. She was so mad she fired him on the spot and told him never to be on the property again. She kept in touch for I think the next ten years. That about sums up a common California issue. I thought that 20 years later those days might be behind me but last week I got a call from someone near LA who had bought a pool heat pump from me but who had not installed it yet. He was worried because his pool guy told him a story about a customer years ago who didn’t like his heat pump. This was a customer who had a 10 KW PV (photovoltaic) panel electricity generating system at his house. So really the heat pump was going to cost him almost nothing to use. I told him not to worry. I thought it was almost malpractice to suggest to a PV electric guy not to use a heat pump. That really is the best of both worlds. So come on California. It is a new century and we have electric cars and computers on our cell phones. Be green. And if you don’t want to be green then indulge yourself and family and get a swimming pool heat pump and save enough money on heating and cooling to take a Europen vacation with your energy savings.
